Militants kill three before voting in Kashmir

INDIA, Apr 22 (Reuters) Militants killed three men in the restive Kashmir region on Monday, police said, in attacks that appeared intended to intimidate locals who are due to vote in a general election this week.
The execution-style attacks targeted two village council heads in the Anantnag district in the broad Kashmir valley to the south of Srinagar.
The police and army launched a combined operation to find the militants blamed for the attacks, the most serious in Jammu and Kashmir, the only Muslim-majority state, of this election season.
"Two village headmen are among three persons killed ahead of polls in South Kashmir's Anantnag constituency tonight," Deputy Superintendent of Police Pervaiz Ahmad told Reuters.
"Village headman Mohammad Anwar Sheikh of Amlar Tral was killed at around 9 p.m. while in another village, Batgund Tral, a village headman, and his son were shot dead by militants," he said.
Kashmir has been divided between India and Pakistan since a war after independence from Britain in 1947. New Delhi maintains a massive military presence in its northernmost territory.
Police believe a few dozen separatist Islamist insurgents, some of them foreign, are at large in southern Kashmir, where they enjoy sympathy among parts of the population that aspire to independence.
In a similar attack on April 17, Mohammad Amin Pandith, the head of another village council in the Anantnag constituency, was shot dead by an assailant wearing army uniform who lured him out of his house.
"He was targeted to make a threat to the whole area (so that) people cannot be active in the election process," his brother, Abdul Rahim Pandith, told Reuters.
"There are people here who support freedom (for Kashmir) - they want to boycott the election."
Following the killing, 25 local councillors in the area resigned their posts.